A Lifetime of Misery
by wtchcool
Summary: Jamie Fleming knelt in front of the grave. AU "Dice." Yes, this is angst.


"A Lifetime of Misery"

By: Wtchcool

_Disclaimer: If I owned "The Cape," I wouldn't have injected this much angst into it. _

"Hello, Daddy." Jamie Fleming knelt in front of the grave. "We got her. We got the bitch that did this to you." Vince had, with her help, tracked down Tracey Jarrod, a.k.a. "Dice," who was currently cooling her heels in Owl Island Prison. Vince had arrived at the Violin Restaurant too late to save her father from the falling chandelier.

"Vince was pretty surprised to find out I was your daughter. It was kind of hard to keep that a secret when I went ballistic over the news. Just as well, because there was no way I would have been able to skip the funeral. Surprise! Your eternally disrespectful daughter had to pay her last respects.

"I hope you're happy. Vince is never going to be able to clear his name now, not with the real Chess dead." The tears in her eyes started to spill over. "He'll never be able to go home to his wife and his son. He says that's the only reason your death didn't give him any satisfaction, but I don't know if I buy that. I think that despite himself, he was charmed by you.

"You had this way about you, charisma or something. It's ironic, because in reality you were a complete ass. You didn't lose any sleep over what you did to Vince, or Dice's father, or anyone else you thought was expendable. But you still managed to charm everyone—the reporters, the judges, the citizens. Oh, you bought them, too, but it never seemed insidious. No one would be able to see you as Chess, unless you turned on them. I think, under different circumstances, you'd have been able to charm that bitch, too—you know, if you hadn't murdered her father in cold blood and then stood to make millions of dollars off of the research on her. I'm not defending her; I'm just saying that that's probably why you couldn't seduce her.

"(Although ick, Dad! Not only would that have been robbing the cradle, but you knew from the start that she was a crazy woman that wanted to kill you. I'd hoped that you had better taste than that.)

"Other than that, there was just one blogger that you weren't able to sweet-talk or eliminate. You never knew that I was Orwell, that your own daughter betrayed you. I didn't—no matter how angry I was, I never really wanted to hurt you. I just wanted you to stop! But not like this. You were supposed to give up being Chess. Either voluntarily, or because you were caught and forced to, but not, not because some psychotic blonde took you down!

"Now you'll never be able to give me away at my wedding. Not that I'm getting married anytime soon, but you never know. It's bad enough that mom wouldn't be there…

"I wonder if you did know the truth about what happened to mom. You never did tell me and part of me used to wonder. But you couldn't have hurt her. She was special to you. I know that. And after she was gone, I was all you had left. And what did I do? I ran the first chance I got.

"I shouldn't have run away. Although you had no business trapping me like a prisoner, but I shouldn't have cut ties with you like that. When was the last time we really talked? That time on the Monte Carlo doesn't count. Did you know that was me on the train, Daddy? You must have; I saw the look on your face when you started following me through the cars. The feathered mask just wasn't doing the trick, huh?

"I hurled accusations at you at a press conference, and you dodged them like the pro you are—_were_," she amended, the tears coming in earnest now. "The last time I technically spoke to you, and I'm going to have to live with that for the rest of my life. Other than that, the last time we spoke was what? Just before I left home at seventeen? There's another conversation—confrontation, really—that will haunt me. I should've stopped loving you, but I _couldn't._

"Damn it! I was supposed to come back. I was planning to go home as soon as Chess was gone. And if you had to go to prison for a while, I was going to visit you there until you were released. (Let's face it: You would've been released at some point. Like I said, the number of people you couldn't wrap around your finger could be counted on one hand.)

"And now it's too late for us to reconcile."

**Author's Note: Un-beta'd. **

**I would say that this is the end, and it is to this plot bunny, but I may add a similarly angst-filled story in a second chapter one of these days, since I want to get more mileage out of the title.**

**In case you didn't catch it, the title is from an episode of "Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman." The "Wedding Destroyer", planning to kill Lois Lane, envisions the "lifetime of misery" that Clark Kent would have to suffer.**


End file.
